Page:The History of Oregon Bancroft 1888.djvu/122

104 entry, and the extension of the revenue laws of the United States over the country. In the spring of 1849 arrived Oregon's first United States revenue officer, John Adair, of Kentucky; and in the autumn George Gibbs, deputy-collector. No trouble seems to have arisen for the first few months, though the company was subjected to much inconvenience by having to go from Fort Victoria to Astoria, a distance of over two hundred miles, to enter the goods designed for the American side of the strait, or for Fort Nisqually to which they must travel back three hundred miles.

About the last of December 1849 the British ship Albion, Captain Richard O. Hinderwell, William Brotchie, supercargo, entered the strait of Fuca without being aware of the United States revenue laws on that part of the coast, and proceeded to cut a cargo of spars at New Dungeness, at the same time trading with the natives, for which they were prepared, by permission of the Hudson's Bay Company in London, with certain Indian goods, though not allowed to buy furs. The owners of the Albion, who had a government contract, had instructed the captain and supercargo to take the spars wherever they found the best timber, but if upon the American side of the strait, to pay for them if they could be bought cheap. But during a stay of about four months at Dungeness, as